EU threatens fines if Apple doesn’t axe geo-blocking on services such as App Store

The European Union has ordered Apple to cease geo-blocking practices on its services, including the App Store, Apple Arcade, Music, iTunes Store, Books, and Podcasts. The EU Commission identified several instances where Apple restricted content based on a user’s location, which is considered a violation of EU consumer protection laws.
The EU has given Apple a one-month deadline to propose solutions to address the identified geo-blocking practices. Failure to comply could result in enforcement actions by national regulators.
Reuters:
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“We are stepping up the fight against geo-blocking. No company, big or small, should unjustly discriminate customers based on their nationality, place of residence or place of establishment,” said European Commissioner Margrethe Vestager.
The EU said Apple had one month to propose commitments on it would address the geo-blocking it had identified.

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MacDailyNews Take: And what about contracts and content usage rights?
Apple needs to play a bit harder ball with the EU. Start pulling content and features and, this time, follow through – clearly identifying the Eurocrats as the issue (run some ads, even) – until the people the EU bureaucrats purport to represent begin to exert pressure on these red tape-spewing politicians to get a clue.
The European Union arose because the Europeans couldn’t compete on their own with the rest of the world, so they each lined up to surrender their national sovereignty, unique cultures, and dignity for an undemocratic, opaque, wasteful, bloated, bureaucratic quasi-governmental blob – and, even with the EU’s thumbs all over the scale, they still can’t compete. — MacDailyNews, March 4, 2024

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